For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.
The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EST.
11:20 a.m.:
11:10 a.m.: Estonia wants to outline a plan by the end of January for seizing some $21.4 million of Russian assets and delivering them under European Union sanctions to Ukraine, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
Estonian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mihkel Tamm said on January 10 that the Baltic state had started working on the proposal last month.
The announcement comes as the European Commission is developing a bloc-wide arrangement to deal with $322 billion in Russian central-bank reserves and billions in frozen assets of Russian nationals sanctioned over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
10:55 a.m.: The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on Tuesday released data showing that donors contributed $327 million in 2022 to the Ukraine Humanitarian Fund.
10:40 a.m.: The CEO of energy company Uniper has decided to step down after the German government nationalized the gas supplier last month, Uniper said Tuesday, The Associated Press reported.
Klaus-Dieter Maubach is exercising a special right to terminate his contract and will leave the board this year, Uniper said in a statement. It added that Maubach, who has led the company since March 2021, was willing to stay in the job until a suitable replacement is appointed.
The German government announced its plan to nationalize Uniper in September, expanding state intervention in the energy sector to prevent a shortage resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, the company bought about half of its gas from Russia, which started cutting deliveries to Germany in June and hasn’t supplied any gas to the country since the end of August.
Uniper has incurred huge costs as a result of those cuts because it was forced to buy gas at far higher market prices to meet its supply contract obligations.
10:15 a.m.:
9:35 a.m.: Europe has dodged an energy apocalypse this winter, economists and officials say, thanks to unusually warm weather and efforts to find other sources of natural gas after Russia cut off most of its supply to the continent.
Natural gas suppliers in recent days have increased their stocks at a time when they’re usually being drawn down — an unexpected boost that has relieved fears of gas used to heat homes, generate electricity and power factories running out by winter’s end.
As a result, short-term gas prices have fallen from record highs, dropping from 18 times what they were before Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s border in early 2021 to four times higher. That’s still painfully high, eating away at company earnings and consumer spending power through costly utility bills and inflation.
But analysts say the worst case of shortages and rationing has been avoided.
The Associated Press published key facts about Europe’s energy struggles in this report
9:10 a.m.:
11:30 p.m.: Ukrainian forces repelled an earlier attempt to take the town but a large number of Wagner Group units quickly returned, deploying new tactics and more soldiers under heavy artillery cover, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said on Monday on the Telegram messaging app, according to Reuters.
"The enemy literally step[s] over the corpses of their own soldiers, using massed artillery, MLRS systems and mortars," Malyar said.
10:30 p.m.:
9:50 p.m.: A Ukrainian couple heard their son's voice off-camera on a video showing soldiers captured by Russian forces in Mariupol. They have been searching for him since he sent a final message on May 17, the day troops defending the Azovstal steelworks surrendered. He is one of many Ukrainians believed to be in Russian custody whose fate is unknown. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this report.
8:38 p.m.:
7:54 p.m.: Britain on Monday scaled back its energy bill support for businesses after warning that the current aid level was unsustainable, Reuters reported.
The government is currently subsidizing energy costs to protect consumers and firms after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a key gas supplier, caused prices to soar.
Finance minister Jeremy Hunt announced Monday that the support for businesses, due to expire in late March, would be overhauled and extended by one year until March 2024.
6:59 p.m.: Vengeance From Above: Ukraine's Aging Helicopters Punish Russian Positions: Soviet-era helicopters have been providing close air support for Ukraine's troops as they seek out Russian positions on the front line near Kherson. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this photo gallery.
6:06 p.m.: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday said the resilience of Ukraine's forces fighting off waves of attacks in the eastern region of Donbas had helped the country win time and gain strength, Reuters reported.
"Thanks to the resilience of our soldiers in Soledar, we have won for Ukraine additional time and additional strength for Ukraine," Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
5:05 p.m.:
4:15 p.m.: Although Ukraine's war has forced some 500,000 children to move abroad, the vast majority have found a way to remain in school. The effects of trauma from the war with Russia vary widely, with an estimated 75% of Ukrainian kids suffering from psychological damage. Current Time's Borys Sachalko talked with three students who have been through differing challenges to see how they're faring. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this report.
3:18 p.m.: The U.S. would risk enabling the spread of extremism in Europe if it stopped providing support to Ukraine in its war with Russia, Maine’s independent senator said Monday in the wake of meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, The Associated Press reported.
Sens. Angus King of Maine and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who sit on the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, traveled to Kyiv last week to meet with Zelenskyy. King said he came back more certain that U.S. aid to Ukraine is vital.
Ukraine is slated to receive $44.9 billion in U.S. aid as part of the recent government spending bill. The U.S. should continue supporting Ukraine until Russian President Vladimir Putin is out of power, King said. He characterized Putin as “a dictator.”
Failure to continue supporting Ukraine would be akin to Western nations’ failure to combat the rise of Germany in the 1930s, King said. He said he plans to make that case to constituents and Republican lawmakers who have voiced skepticism of continued U.S. involvement in the war.
“I get letters every now and then, people saying, ‘Why are we doing this? Ukraine’s far away. It’s not our fight.’ Well, it is our fight, because if we don’t fight it now, it will spread,” King said. “And it will become something that we can’t avoid being involved in, just as occurred in the late 1930s at the beginning of World War II.”
2:30 p.m.: Ukrainian police said on Monday they were looking for two British voluntary workers who had gone missing in east Ukraine, the scene of heavy fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces, Reuters reported.
A police statement named the two as Andrew Bagshaw and Christopher Parry and said in a statement they were trying to establish their whereabouts.
The police said the two left the city of Kramatorsk for the town of Soledar on Friday morning and were reported missing on Saturday evening after contact with them was lost. The police statement said they were aged 28 and 48 but gave no details of their voluntary work.
Kramatorsk is about 80 km (50 miles) from Soledar, where Ukraine's military says fighting is particularly intense.
"We are supporting the families of two British men who have gone missing in Ukraine," Britain's foreign office said.
2:05 p.m.:
1:45 p.m.: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is starting Monday a weeklong trip to Europe and North America Monday in Paris where he will hold talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on key global issues, including the war in Ukraine, The Associated Press reported.
Macron and Kishida’s talks come as Japan is leading the Group of Seven most advanced economies and is preparing the next G-7 summit scheduled in May in Hiroshima.
Central to discussions between Macron and Kishida will be the war in Ukraine and the response to Russian aggression, according to the Elysee.
Kishida’s five nation-tour will also take him Italy, Britain, Canada and the U.S. where he will have talks Friday with President Joe Biden.
Japan in December adopted key security and defense reforms, including a counterstrike capability that breaks from an exclusively self-defense-only postwar principle.
1:15 p.m.:
12:55 p.m.: The Russian and Ukrainian human rights commissioners will meet in Turkey this week, news agencies from both countries reported on Monday, for talks likely to include the possibility of further exchanges of prisoners of war, Reuters reported.
Interfax quoted the Russian commissioner, Tatiana Moskalkova, as saying the meeting with her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Lubinets would take place during an international forum in Turkey between Thursday and Saturday.
She said there had already been discussion of the "approximate agenda of our negotiations", but gave no details.
Ukraine's Ukrinform news agency quoted Lubinets as saying the main issue was "the return of our heroes and heroines", a reference to prisoner exchanges.
12:25 p.m.:
12:05 p.m.: Officials at a vocational school in an eastern Ukraine city dismissed claims by Russia that hundreds of Ukrainian troops were killed in a missile strike there, saying Monday that a rocket merely blew out windows and damaged classrooms, The Associated Press reported.
Russia specifically named the vocational school in Kramatorsk as the target of an attack in the almost 11-month war. The Russian Defense Ministry said its missiles hit two temporary bases housing 1,300 Ukrainian troops in the city, killing 600 of them, late Saturday.
Associated Press reporters visiting the scene in sunny weather Monday saw a four-story concrete building with most of its windows blown out. Inside, locals were cleaning up debris, sweeping up broken glass and hurling broken furniture out into a missile crater below.
A separate, six-story school building was largely undamaged. There were neither signs of a Ukrainian military presence nor any casualties.
Yana Pristupa, the school’s deputy director, scoffed at Moscow’s claims of hitting a troop concentration. “Nobody saw a single spot of blood anywhere,” she told the AP. “Everyone saw yesterday that no one carried out any bodies. It’s just people cleaning up.”
11:30 a.m.:
10:50 a.m.: Russia on Monday opted out of a European convention on fighting corruption, a move that comes in the wake of its withdrawal from the Council of Europe following start of Moscow’s military action in Ukraine, The Associated Press reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin asked the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, to terminate adherence to the Council of Europe’s convention on fighting corruption that Russia signed in 1999. The date for a vote on termination hasn’t been set yet, but it’s expected to come soon.
Putin argued in his letter to the Duma that the opt-out was the result of the Council’s decision to restrict Moscow’s participation in a body charged with overseeing general compliance with the convention, something he called “unacceptable” and “discriminatory.”
The Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights organization, suspended Russia’s participation shortly after it sent troops into Ukraine on February 24. Russia withdrew from the Council in March and warned that it will also opt out of conventions that it signed as part of its membership in the organization. Moscow backed out of the European Convention on Human Rights in September.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Russia’s withdrawal from the anti-corruption convention wouldn’t hinder official efforts to combat graft.
10:35 a.m.:
10:10 a.m.: Britain is considering supplying Ukraine with tanks for the first time to help the country fight Russian forces, Sky News reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources.
Discussions have been taking place "for a few weeks" about delivering the British Army's Challenger 2 main battle tank to Ukraine, Sky said, quoting a Western source with knowledge of the conversations.
Supplying tanks would represent a significant step-up in Western support to Ukraine, but the British government has not yet taken a final decision on the matter, the report added.
Sky cited one unnamed source saying Britain could offer around 10 Challenger 2 tanks.
The Challenger 2 is a battle tank designed to attack other tanks, and has been in service with the British army since 1994. It has been deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Iraq, according to the British army.
9:50 a.m.:
9:20 a.m.: Kyiv expects the European Union to include Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom in its next round of sanctions over the war in Ukraine, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Monday, according to Reuters.
Shmyhal said after talks in Kyiv with Frans Timmermans, a vice-president of the European Union's executive European Commission, that Russia's nuclear energy industry should be punished over the invasion of Ukraine more than 10 months ago.
Russia has occupied the Zaporizhzia nuclear power station in southeastern Ukraine since last March and President Vladimir Putin issued a decree last October transferring control of the plant from Ukrainian nuclear energy company Energoatom to a subsidiary of Rosatom. Kyiv says the move amounts to theft.
"We are actively working with our European partners on providing support in four areas: demilitarization of the Zaporizhzhia NPP, supply of electrical equipment, opportunities to import electricity from the EU, and sanctions against Russia," Shmyhal wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
8:55 a.m.: Norway's oil output is expected to rise by 6.9% this year as the huge Johan Sverdrup field ramps up production while gas volumes are predicted to remain unchanged near record highs, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) said on Monday, Reuters reported. Norway last year overtook Russia as Europe's biggest gas supplier, with Equinor the top exporter, after Russia's Gazprom cut off much of the gas on which Europe previously depended.
8:25 a.m.: Sweden and the United States have begun negotiations to form deeper security ties in the form of a defense cooperation agreement (DCA), the Swedish government said in a statement on Monday, according to Reuters.
A DCA will create a legal framework for the presence of U.S. forces in Sweden and enables an even closer bilateral cooperation than facilitated by NATO membership, the Swedish defense ministry said.
“The United States is Sweden’s most important security and defense partner, both bilaterally and within NATO,” the ministry said.
Sweden in May applied alongside Finland to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the application is still awaiting the approval of members Hungary and Turkey.
8:10 a.m.:
7:50 a.m.: Ukraine said it was strengthening its forces around Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region and repelling constant attacks there by Russian mercenary group Wagner, whose leader has vowed to capture the area's vast underground mines, Reuters reported.
Kyiv had sent reinforcements to Soledar, a small town near Bakhmut where the situation was particularly difficult, Ukrainian officials said.
"The enemy again made a desperate attempt to storm the city of Soledar from different directions and threw the most professional units of the Wagnerites into battle," Ukraine's military said in a statement.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group, has been trying to capture Bakhmut and Soledar for months at the cost of many lives on both sides. He said on Saturday its significance lay in the network of mines there.
7:35 a.m.:
7:20 a.m.: Russian actor Artur Smolyaninov faces criminal charges in his home country after allegedly making "anti-Russian" comments in a newspaper interview, Reuters reported Monday, citing investigators.
Smolyaninov, who starred in the 2005 film "The 9th Company" about the Soviet Union's ill-fated military campaign in Afghanistan, said in an interview last week that he would fight for Ukraine, not Russia, if he had to take part in the conflict.
Smolyaninov said last October that he was no longer living in Russia.
His comments — made in an interview for Novaya Gazeta Europe, a newspaper now banned in Russia — drew condemnation from members of the Russian parliament, one of whom said the actor should be barred from all state-contracted films.
"For my part, I will appeal to the Investigative Committee with a request to initiate a criminal case against this traitor," lawmaker Biysultan Khamzaev told the RIA news agency.
The Investigative Committee said on Monday it had launched a criminal case against Smolyaninov after he took part in an interview with a "Western publication," but did not provide further details.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, dozens of actors and artists have fled abroad in fear of breaching the country's tough new laws on spreading "misinformation" about the war in Ukraine or discrediting the Russian army.
Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a "special military operation" designed to demilitarize and "denazify" the country. Kyiv and its Western allies cast the invasion as an unprovoked act of aggression aimed at seizing territory.
7:05 a.m.: Three women from Ukraine, Iran, and Turkey have won Sweden's Olof Palme human rights prize in 2023 for championing women's rights and freedoms, according to Agence France-Presse.
Marta Chumalo of Ukraine, Iran's Narges Mohammadi, and Eren Keskin of Turkey were honored for "their efforts in the fight to secure women's freedom, in an age when human rights are threatened by war, violence and oppression," the Olof Palme Memorial Fund said in a statement.
An award ceremony will be held in Stockholm on February 1.
6:50 a.m.:
6:30 a.m.: Germany has no current plans to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, a government spokesperson told a regular briefing on Monday.
Germany last week announced it was sending Marder fighting vehicles to Kyiv, answering calls for more heavy weapons to repel Russian forces, Reuters reported. Germany's economy minister also said Berlin cannot rule out the delivery of the Leopard tanks, which are heavier fighting vehicles than the Marders.
6:15 a.m.: The Kremlin said on Monday that new deliveries of Western weapons to Kyiv would "deepen the suffering of the Ukrainian people" and would not change the course of the conflict, Reuters reported.
"This supply will not be able to change anything," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a daily briefing.
Ukraine, which has scored some battlefield successes since Russian forces invaded last February, has asked Western allies for heavier weapons and air defenses as it seeks to tip the balance of the 10-month long conflict in its favor.
6:00 a.m.: The Kremlin on Monday rejected a Ukrainian assertion that a senior Russian official has been floating the idea of a potential peace deal over Ukraine with European officials, Reuters reported.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, told the country's public broadcaster on Thursday that Dmitry Kozak, deputy head of Russia's presidential administration, had been holding meetings with European officials in an attempt to force Kyiv to sign what he characterized as an unfavorable peace deal.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about Danilov's assertion, said it was "another fake."
5:45 a.m.:
5:30 a.m.: According to Reuters, the Kremlin said on Monday that it was confident its defense ministry was correct when it said that 600 Ukrainian servicemen had been "destroyed" in an attack on the city of Kramatorsk, despite reporting which showed the attack missed its target.
"The Kremlin has absolute confidence, I would like to remind you of the President's words that the main source of information is the Ministry of Defense," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a daily briefing.
A Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk missed its targets and there were no obvious signs of casualties, a Reuters reporter said on Sunday, after Moscow claimed the strike had killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers.
5 a.m.: Pope Francis on Monday said wars like the one in Ukraine where civilian areas are subjected to what he called indiscriminate destruction are "a crime against God and humanity."
Reuters reported that Francis made his remarks in his yearly speech to diplomats accredited to the Vatican, an overview of the world situation which has come to be known informally as his "state of the world" address.
Francis spoke of "the war in Ukraine, with its wake of death and destruction, with its attacks on civil infrastructures that cause lives to be lost not only from gunfire and acts of violence, but also from hunger and freezing cold."
He then immediately quoted from a Vatican constitution, saying "every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and humanity which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."
Referring to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, he said: "Sadly, today too, the nuclear threat is raised, and the world once more feels fear and anguish."
He repeated his appeal for a total ban on nuclear weapons, saying even their possession for reasons of deterrence is "immoral."
4:30 a.m.: A 60-year-old woman was killed and several other people were wounded in a Russian missile strike on a market in the village of Shevchenkove in eastern Ukraine on Monday, the regional governor said according to Reuters.
Footage posed by public broadcaster Suspilne on the Telegram messaging app showed rescue workers sifting through large piles of rubble, burning wreckage and a large crater in what it said was Shevchenkove, southeast of the regional capital Kharkiv.
"According to confirmed information, unfortunately a 60-year-old woman died," Oleh Synehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region, wrote on Telegram.
"All other victims were hospitalized. Doctors are helping them. Rescuer workers continue to clear the debris."
He had said earlier that at least seven people had been wounded, including a 13-year-old girl. The reports could not immediately be verified independently by Reuters.
Suspilne quoted a local official as saying at least three pavilions were destroyed in the attack and that a shopping center was damaged, but that Monday was not a market day.
Russia, which invaded Ukraine more than 10 months ago, did not immediately comment on the reported attack.
4 a.m.: Shipping traffic in the Suez Canal was proceeding normally on Monday after tugs towed a cargo vessel that broke down during its passage through the waterway, Reuters reported the Canal Authority as saying.
The breakdown was expected to cause only minor delays, with convoys of ships resuming regular transit by 11:00 local time (09:00 GMT), shipping agent Leth said.
The M/V Glory, which was sailing to China, suffered a technical fault when it was 38km into its passage southward through the canal, before being towed by four tugs to a repair area, the Suez Canal Authority said in a statement.
It departed Ukraine's Chornomorsk port on December 25 bound for China with 65,970 metric tons of corn, according to the Istanbul-based Joint Coordination Centre, or JCC, overseeing Ukraine grain exports.
The JCC, which includes representatives from the United Nations, Turkey, Ukraine and Russia, said the ship had been cleared to carry on its journey from Istanbul after an inspection on January 3.
3:30 a.m.:
3 a.m.:
2:30 a.m.: The ongoing war in Ukraine is cited as one of the factors that four out of ten German companies are expecting business to shrink in 2023, a survey by the German Economic Institute (IW) showed on Monday. Other factors include high energy costs and supply chain issues.
"The risk of a gas shortage in the 2022/23 winter season is no longer as present as it was in the summer of 2022, and energy prices have also retreated since then. However, they remain at a high level and production disruptions cannot be ruled out," the IW said in the survey seen by Reuters. "Moreover, it will only become clear in the course of 2023 how extensive gas and energy supply can be built up for the next winter and the extent of any possible disruptions that could occur in 2023."
The survey of around 2,500 companies showed that around a third of companies expect output to stagnate and the remaining quarter predict business will grow. Germany's economy, Europe's largest, is forecast to shrink by 0.3% next year, the most among G-7 nations, according to the International Monetary Fund, hit by a sudden halt of gas flows from Russia, its former main supplier.
The outlook is particularly bleak in the German construction sector, where more than half of companies surveyed by IW expect a decline in production and just 15% anticipate more business. The picture is barely brighter in industry, where 39% of surveyed companies forecast a decline, driven by a cautious assessment in the consumer and basic industries.
2 a.m.:
1:30 a.m.:
1 a.m.: Russia's government extended support to a legislative amendment that would classify maps that dispute the country's official "territorial integrity" as punishable extremist materials, Reuters cited the state-owned TASS news agency as reporting on Sunday.
The amendment to Russia's anti-extremism legislation stipulates that "cartographic and other documents and images that dispute the territorial integrity of Russia" will be classified as extremist materials, the agency reported.
Russia's sweepingly ambiguous anti-extremism legislation — it applies to religious organizations, journalists and their materials, as well as the activity of businesses, among others — has allowed the Kremlin to tighten its grip on opponents.
The new amendment, TASS reports without citing sources, emerged after its authors pointed out that some maps distributed in Russia dispute the "territorial affiliation" of the Crimean Peninsula and the Kuril Islands.
Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea in 2014 — a move rejected by Ukraine and many countries as illegal. Ukrainians and their government have since often objected to world maps showing Crimea as part of Russia's territory.
Russia and Japan have not formally ended World War Two hostilities because of their standoff over a group of islands just off Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido. The Soviet Union seized those islands — known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories — at the end of the war.
The amendment must be proposed to the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, and after a review go through three readings. It is then sent to the Federation Council, the upper house, and to President Vladimir Putin for signing.
Separately, Russian politicians began debating punishment for Russians who oppose the war in Ukraine and who, as the former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, "wish their fatherland to perish."
Medvedev, one of the most forthright allies of Putin, said that "in times of war," there are special rules that allow to deal with traitors.
"In times of war, there have always been such special rules," Medvedev said on the Telegram messaging app. "And quiet groups of impeccably inconspicuous people who effectively execute the rules."
Medvedev's rhetoric has become increasingly vitriolic since the war in Ukraine began, though his published views sometimes chime with thinking at the top levels of the Kremlin elite.
12:30 a.m.:
12:01 a.m.: Ukrainian forces are repelling constant attacks on the town of Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region and holding their positions in nearby Soledar in very difficult conditions, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday, according to Reuters.
"Bakhmut is holding on despite everything. And even though most of the town has been destroyed by Russian strikes, our soldiers are repelling constant Russian attempts to advance," Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
"Soledar is holding on, even though there is even greater destruction and things are very difficult."
Zelenskyy issued a fresh denunciation of what he said was Russia's failure to observe a truce it had proclaimed for Orthodox Christmas by staging attacks on Ukrainian cities.
"Russians were shelling Kherson with incendiary ammunition immediately after Christmas," he said, referring to a city in the south abandoned by Russian forces in November.
"Strikes on Kramatorsk and other cities in Donbas - on civilian targets and at the very time when Moscow was reporting a supposed 'silence' for its army."
Russia said on Sunday that a missile attack on Kramatorsk, northwest of Bakhmut, had killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers, but a Reuters reporter at the scene found no obvious signs of casualties.
Some information in this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
